2 Big Things

1. Today is Paul Barba's 23rd Birthday! And it's the first year I can wish him happy birthday as my husband, which is really special and cool. I'm planning on cooking a very special Wednesday birthday dinner. I'll update with recipes and pics later.

On Sunday, we celebrated a little early with my parents and brother back in Hubbtown. My mom made a delicious dinner with all the fixin's (Soup, salad, AND potato!), as well as a chocolate strawberry birthday cake for the guest of honor.

She covered it with a homemade marshmallow fondant. The recipe is here. It was actually pretty tasty, and most of the comments on the site claim that it tastes way better than regular fondant. It was kind of heavy though, and got hardened by the air. It's not buttercream, but man, was it fun to play with.


We used food coloring to dye the pieces. One or two drops was plenty to color a sizeable gob of it. We made the skull because we had a huge ball of extra fondant.

Here are three tips for playing with fondant. 1. Buttering your hands keeps it from getting crumbly as you play with it 2. Dusting of powdered sugar reduces stickiness. 3. To attach your decorations firmly, wet them slightly with water.



The elephant is my favorite part. Paul made him :).
My parents got the birthday boy a gift certificate to a homebrew supply store. Paul is really excited to get down to business, and start making beer in our basement. Which brings me to...

2.

We bought a house! We're going to have our very own basement to brew beer in. We will be residing at 152 Pearl St. (near Bach Lane, of all places!) in South Hadley by the end of the Summer. House warming invitations to come! Now all we;ve got to do is secure a mortgage. :) I feel a little old.